Welcome to the Wandering Drays!

Not all who wander are lost...

Welcome to my blog dedicated to my family and our crazy foreign service life. Never content with staying in one place, we are excited to share our journeys. We've survived an unaccompanied tour (Baghdad), multiple TDYs, and enjoyed a two-year family assignment in Cairo, Egypt. Currently serving in the Washington, DC area, I write about what I know. Which is mainly toddlers, school-aged children, their gross pets, dealing with lots of government info, our moving adventures, being a nurse, running, living on too-little sleep, and an addiction to Starbucks lattes. I hope you'll enjoy this glimpse into our lives.

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Saturday, February 15, 2014

The Blog Has Not Gone Silent! A Catch-Up Since...well, December. And The Tween Turns ELEVEN!

Love wearing fun shirts with my uniforms when I work pediatrics!
I also have Batman and Captain America.

Last I wrote, I was in the middle of working the equivalent of two full-time RN gigs. And it was Christmastime. And oh, my. How time has slipped by.

Too many shifts to keep track of; every kind of shift that you can think of. Dayshift, afternoons, late afternoons, nights. Rotating, days-to-nights, too little sleep and so many hours, so very many hours. ER to pediatric office; pediatric office one day and the ER the next. Repeat repeat repeat. One day, I even worked at both facilities. Of course, I love what I do, but those eight weeks were truly exhausting. Completely rewarding professionally, but also completely exhausting.

Sure, I know it's my own fault. Not sure of what kind of nursing I really wanted to do while we're here in the U.S. (two years? three years? BIDDING NEXT SUMMER!), I've been dabbling here and there at a few different places: ER, pediatrics, and post-op. And then I accepted the pediatric office contract in late November that turned out to be awesome. It was only eight weeks long, but it impacted me so much and really made me think that maybe it was time to move away from the ER. At least for a bit.

Mercenary nurse; nurse for hire; contract nurse; travel nurse. There's lots of fun terms to describe what I do. But in a nutshell, my nursing specialty over the past year has really been to step into a facility that is short on nurses, whether for the day or longer term. So I move from place to place to fill in those holes. My preference is really for longer contracts (13 weeks or longer) at a single facility, as opposed to a daily fill-in. But either way, it's the kind of nursing I like, at least right now.

Since last September, I've been contracting with a local nursing staffing agency who's been working to find me those 'just-right-fit' facilities I like to work at. It was this agency that I contracted through for the 8-week pediatric assignment. And in late January, this agency came through for me again, submitting my profile for an RN contract position at NIH (National Institutes of Health). On a pediatric floor! It's all gone so fast -- interview, contract offer, the difficult decision to leave my per diem position at the ER I've been working at since last October.

So here I am. Two months since the last blog. Starting a new field in a career I absolutely love. Stepping outside of my comfort zone - leaving the ER for pediatric nursing and research. And finally, I'm only working one job! [Well, actually I still dabble in the ER - I work the occasional shift at Georgetown University Hospital's ER through my staffing agency. Can't help myself!] And hoping to find that ever elusive family-work-life balance. Right. I know. Impossible, but I'm always, always!, trying to find it.

Of course, it's not been all work and no play! As cray cray as these past few months have been, we've really enjoyed them. Christmas; New Years; the fab hubby and I celebrated our 15th Year Wedding Anniversary!; I'm training for a March half marathon (and the snow is making it near impossible - I worry I'll be walking a good portion of that race); a trip to visit family and friends in Ohio; the fab hubby's forty-something-ish birthday and Owen (the tween!) turned eleven! Whew. As always, a whirlwind...

First time seeing Santa in the U.S! Last two years, Santa has arrived on a camel.

Christmas.

More Christmas.

Yup. More Christmas fun!

Fifteen YEARS on January 2nd! Pictures from our first Chirstmas and our most recent.

My annual New Year's Day run; rocked it with the toddler.

The big kids had Parkour Camp over the winter break!

Working at the pediatric office. Everyone loves a happy nurse!

Because no matter how busy you get, you should always enjoy the small moments.

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About Me

Wife, mother, RN, runner, new world traveler. My husband is employed with the Foreign Service and we've picked up our lives a couple times over. In summer 2013, we moved back to the U.S. after a 2-year assignment in Cairo, Egypt. I like to call myself a 'mercenary' nurse, and I recently completed a 6-month ER nurse contract in Los Angeles, CA. Currently, my husband is assigned in Washington, DC and we all live in NoVA. We bid agin for an assignment in summer 2014.

Jason and Heather, married 1999. Kiddos Owen (11), Abby (8), and Kellen, AKA The Toddler (3). Toy Fox Terrier "Starbuck" -- weighs all of 9 lbs and is highly caffeinated and super crazy energetic. The newest member of our household is "Boots" - Owen's all black rescue cat from Egypt. She's blind and has seizures, but Owen absolutely loves her and she loves him in return.

OCCUPATIONS:

Jason works for the Foreign Service; Heather was an RN for the Foreign Service when she wasin Egypt, but is currently working an RN Contract assignments in the Washington, D.C. area in Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics. The kids go to school. The toddler hangs around the house and destroys everything in his path.